Book Review: The Millionaire Fastlane by Michael Composto

A week back, while sitting in the TiE Conference in Calcutta, Mr. Suvrangshu Kar, Founder and CEO of http://www.erp2online.com mentioned about the book and I had the book read in the same evening. This 15 mins conversation proved to be the greatest takeaway for me for the 12 hour conference. I did not attend it fully – rising temperature post winter, nice lunch and vicinity of my house from the venue forced me for an afternoon ‘power sleep’.

The review below is the result of that ‘power sleep’.

1. The Book declares that it is better to be a millionaire at 30 rather than at 70.

Translated : if your plan is to save, invest, speculate over a 30 year period while working, then it is statistically impossible to become real wealthy. For example, for an average worker to become a millionaire while working will take 146 years, even with the power of compound interest. By some freak, if you become so, what is the benefit of wealth for you when you are 70 ? Your companions are not young women and boundless vigour of youth, but gout, arthritis, replaced knee, insulin vials.

2.Time is limited and is to be leveraged

Translated : Health and wealth but with locked time is worthless. If you find your time locked with your employer, your business, your enterprise and you are not able to do what you want or what you are passionate about, you need to reconsider your strategy. Kill your darlings – be it the job, business model, product or service. Make sure you command your time.

3. Plant Money Trees

Translated : If you observe your time, you shall find that you use most of your time for money. The corporate workers work with 5-2 mode ( 2 days of weekend for 5 days of indentured time), a business owner’s time is spent most in getting investment, selling and collecting money. One needs to consciously mould his her business so that the business / investment works like a money tree. Consider a tomato groves. You go and pluck some tomatoes and you see that there are some more ready for plucking tomorrow after your sleep. The Money tree needs to produce fruits with minimum of your time spent.

4. Money is not scarce, time is

Translated : Everyday 30 trillion dollars of money circulates in the economy and this is going to increase as Government is printing more money. In theory, money is in plenty while taken as a whole but your time is fundamentally limited. You do not get a single second extra than 86,400 a day. This is fixed. You can only leverage this, i.e. using a model, you can expand this time in relation to earning money. You need to select business models which allows this leverage. Otherwise, you shall remain a time indentured slave.

5. Select proper land, select proper seeds to plant your money trees

Translated : Most of the mainstream models – business, education, investment, lifestyle are not time-leveraged. Hence, you need to select only those which will be fertile to grow your money tree. This means that you need to discard mercilessly any attachment to any ‘love to’ work, darling models. Automatize your farming of money as much as you can and with unlocked time, learn and enjoy. Do not learn for earning or having money. Learn because you need not think about money. You have your money trees.

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Afterthought

The Book is disturbing because it challenges our mind-set and view of life. But that is the virtue of the book. It is insulting to our ‘darling’ : work hard and grow in life while becoming an indentured slave of a corporation or your customers.

It is very important for young men and women in their 20s and 30s to feel the jolt of the book.

The book will appear to be starkly and damn materialistic to an Indian reader. It is. Some will even despise the book’s admonition and more intelligent may even consider this as a mirage or will-o-the-wisp as to gather sales. That is not the ultimate point although this may be.

The book in its naked and unabashed hedonism in its subtle representation has arrived, unconsciously at the starting gate of spirituality : your attachment to your own prison cell, be it the proverbial cubicle, the business which is commoditized, you are bossed by customers, vendors and employees and sucking your time, your lifestyle which is pushing you to sell more and more of your time for less and less, your inhibition to learn new skills and to forget old ones.

In short : Highly recommended book.

Postscript : A personal anecdote

1996 – 2004 : I was a corporate employee and 2920 days worth of time was sold for money, not a large money but subsistence money. Even selling 2920 days in a row, I had to again work for a nominal lifestyle. I invested mostly in building 6 flats in my ancestral house. These are rented now and is one of the money trees.

2005 – 2010 : Left job to build a business (www.wordsmithcommunication.com) and which forced me to automatize in a way to free more and more time for me. I had fired clients who demanded more times, endured revenue loss but continued and did build two businesses which were completely automated. These businesses sold videos, tapes and books of other people. The business did not boom but high automation and no demand on my time made sure that I can learn more skills. The automated businesses were the money trees.

2010 -2015 : Attempts to automatize more and more and looking for fertile grounds with a plan to retire in next 10 years to pursue a passion : Plain Living High Thinking till death. The project itself can be considered as a long term preparation for death.